stevetoney

I received my new smart battery charger (IMAX B6 Lipo Battery Balance Charger) on Friday and now I have a couple of questions for about battery recharging.

1) I'm using NiMH RC batteries and SLA's. My new charger gives me the ability to discharge the battery before recharging. So, what's the guideline for discharging before recharging? It doesn't make sense to me to do it every time. Maybe once every ten recharges? Once every month? Once a year?

2) This new charger has the ability to cycle the batteries through alternate discharge/recharges. I've got a few batteries that I'd previously left as dead that I'm gonna try to resurrect. After the final recharge cycle is complete, the charger indicates how many maH were input to the battery. So the question is...can I expect that's what the battery will give me when I take it out into the field or does a dead battery lose that charge almost instantly after disconnecting from the charger? Perhaps another way to ask the question...say I have a 3000mah RC battery that I think might be dead. If I put it through the alternate discharge/recharge cycles, what would I expect it to read at the end if the battery is dead...would it read say something low like 200-500 mah and then die quickly in the field because there was no mah input or would it read 3000mah but then after I disconnect the battery from the charger it dies quickly?

3) Is there a guideline on the number of times you should cycle a dead battery to try to resurrect it. One person already told me that three times should be enough to know if the battery might have some life left. Any other opinions?

stevetoney

I'm in the process of answering my questions myself by cycling all of my batteries and seeing what happens as they discharge and recharge. The great thing about this charger is it tells you all along the way what the amount of mah's that were discharged and how many were needed for a recharge. It also is telling me when a battery starts out dry or not. Pretty smart device really. I'll report back here when I reach some definite conclusions.